Summary: The coronavirus pandemic is both a foreign policy and a public health issue — and the Trump administration’s mismanagement on both fronts has cost tens of thousands of American lives and trillions of dollars to our economy.

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The conventional wisdom about political campaigns is that voters don’t care about foreign policy.

Political consultants advise their clients to focus on “kitchen table” issues like jobs, health care, education and safe neighborhoods and schools.

I’ve long believed that this piece of campaign orthodoxy was based on a false premise: the problem isn’t that voters don’t care about international issues, it’s that so few of our candidates have the expertise and communications skills to talk about foreign policy in a way that connects to those kitchen table issues.

Voters are smarter than political consultants think they are; candidates aren’t as smart on foreign policy as they should be, given the world we live in today.

The success — or failure — of American foreign policy has an impact on every kitchen table issue.

The coronavirus pandemic is both a foreign policy and a public health issue — and the Trump administration’s mismanagement on both fronts has cost tens of thousands of American lives and trillions of dollars to our economy. It is dominating our conversations with friends and family — it is, in most American households, quite literally a kitchen table issue.

So, will 2020 be a year in which voters care about foreign policy? On Monday, National Security Action (a group founded by former Obama administration officials to advise Democrats on foreign policy) released a new poll conducted by Hart Research of likely voters in battleground states for the Senate and presidential elections in November, including Colorado. Its findings suggest that Donald Trump — and those who have endorsed him, like vulnerable Colorado Republican Sen. Cory Gardner — may pay a price at the ballot box.

The poll was conducted before the escalation of the coronavirus crisis in the United States last month, and it suggests that voters were already concerned about Trump’s conduct of foreign relations.

Indeed, the advantage that Republicans have historically had in public polling about foreign policy (one that has been stubbornly resilient since Reagan), seems to be melting away under Trump’s mismanagement.

The over 1,200 voters who took part in the poll self-reported who they voted for in the 2016 election — 47% voted for Trump, 46% for Clinton, and 5% for third-party candidates, and it included a large group of self-identified undecided voters looking to November’s election.

A plurality of those polled — 46% — say that re-electing Trump would make us less safe, while only 40% say another Trump term would make us more safe. Meanwhile, 44% say that electing a Democrat would make us more safe, while only 35% say it would make us less safe.

The poll found that 56% of the sampled voters say Trump has made the United States less respected in the world, including a staggering 64% of independent voters.

Half of Democrats and 45% of independents see standing up for our values related to human rights and democracy as a key issue in deciding who to vote for in November (more than a third of Republicans do, too). Meanwhile, over half of undecided voters assess that Trump “cozies up to dictators, abandoning our allies and betraying our values.”

Voters question Trump’s competence and his motives, as 61% of voters believe that Trump refuses to listen to facts from military advisers, intelligence officials, scientists and policy experts.

Over two-thirds of voters — and 77% of independents — want a president to emphasize diplomacy and working with other countries over military strength when confronting global challenges, and by a 22-point margin — 49% vs. 27% — voters think Trump has made it more likely, rather than less likely, that the United States will go to war.

The impeachment trial over Trump’s attempt to use military assistance to coerce Ukraine, as well as Trump’s family’s murky business dealings have also left an impression with voters: a majority — 55% — think it’s definitely or probably true that Trump’s foreign policy is about what’s good for Trump, even when it goes against America’s interests and security.

Perhaps one reason for the conventional wisdom about voters not caring about foreign policy has been that most voters don’t have enough background to be able to understand the ins and outs of trade deals or Middle East peace. (In my experience, neither do most members of Congress.) But voters do understand that war is costly and should only ever be a last resort.

They understand that America’s standing in the world matters, and that when we live up to the values on which our democracy was founded we have more influence in the world and more ability to deliver for the American people.

They understand that there are real threats in the world — terrorism, dictators, climate change, nuclear weapons, pandemics — and that Trump’s combination of recklessness, ignorance and narcissism is like getting in a car with a drunk driver.

American families depend on a federal government that can navigate global challenges so that they can focus on kitchen table issues. Now, more than ever, we are seeing the consequences that befall us when we don’t have a steady, principled, competent hand at the helm.

The Obama administration supported the Assad dictatorship against the democratic opposition in Syria. With over a half million killed and millions displaced, Obama fiddled while the opposition literally burned! The US has supported every absolute monarchy in the Middle East since 1946. Obama was hardly an exception. But Obama took this anti-democratic policy even further. He actually tilted toward Iran regionally in the vain hope of altering Tehran's hegemonic drive for regional supremacy. Of course, this policy failed. As did any hope of deterring the Islamic Republic from its program to develop a nuclear weapon sometime within the next eight to ten years. The JCPOA was a regional disaster because it assures that nuclear weapons proliferation -- and the missiles to deliver them -- will advance through Iran and then into Turkey, Saudi Arabia and perhaps Jordan and Egypt. Biden will probably be elected, but he will face the prospect of a Middle East on the nuclear brink if he continues with the totally discredited Obama nuclear policy. The Democratic Party ran away from democracy in the Middle East in pursuit of its sweetheart nuclear deal with Iran. Nearly every Syrian knows this. As does the entire Arab Sunni world. Trump hasn't acted much better in a pursuit of democratic values, but at least he recognized how deeply flawed the JCPOA actually was. On this issue, Biden will find America's traditional Middle East allies in strange alignment and in tacit agreement: The Iran nuclear deal will need to be renegotiated or all hell will probably break loose. Now that General Gantz will become Israel's defence minister -- and by October 2021 its prime minister -- the new Biden Administration will have to deal with a center-left politician who (like Netanyahu) understands the dangerous precedents of Iran appeasement. Biden will be ill served if he attempts to revive Obama's naive and dangerous Middle East delusions. It will be Biden's task to offer a balanced and just alternative to the JCPOA that all parties can embrace. If however, he continues to move left -- against Israel and the Sunni Arab states, and once again toward Iran -- the US will find its position weakened by the shrewd opportunist in the Kremlin and even perhaps the leadership in Beijing. Biden will definitely not have the luxury of resting on the false laurels of the highly over-confident Obama foreign policy in the Middle East. However, if he does, he will be in for a very rude awakening.

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